Valley Bible Church is in reality the merger of two churches, Inland Community Bible Church and Central Valley Bible Church.
Central Valley Bible Church started meeting in September of 1981, with Jerry Larson as the first pastor. CVBC met at Sunrise Elementary and Central Valley High School in the early years and experienced rapid growth. During these first years, the 10-acre property where VBC now resides was purchased. Inland Community Bible Church started as a Bible study group including several families that had been attending CVBC. This group, with the blessing of the CVBC leadership, began to make steps toward starting a new church and soon called Paul Murray to serve as pastor.
On February 6, 1986 the church was legally established with the name Inland Community Bible Church. It met in the Seventh Day Adventist building that was on the northeast corner of Pines and Mission.
Central Valley Bible Church continued to operate, but when pastor Jerry Larson left that ministry for a position in Oregon, the CVBC leadership, with youth pastor Doug Wieber as the remaining staff, commissioned a search committee to look for a new teaching pastor. After considering many candidates over several months, one idea that came to light was the possibility of merging Inland Community and Central Valley, with Paul Murray and Doug Wieber both serving as pastors.
Paul and Doug, along with the leadership teams of both churches, began to meet and explore together the idea of merging the two churches. For almost a year the teams met regularly working through the details of a merger.
God did an amazing work and around Easter 1989, the decision was made for the two churches to officially merge with Paul Murray as the teaching pastor and Doug Wieber as the youth pastor.
The new group adopted the name Valley Bible Church, choosing to meet at the Seventh Day Adventist facility. Instead of incorporating all over again, it was decided to dissolve Central Valley Bible Church and change the name of the Inland Community Bible Church to Valley Bible Church, using the Inland Community incorporation date of February 6, 1986.
We continued to meet at the SDA facility, but began plans to build our own church building on the Sullivan property. Our current building, which was constructed largely through volunteer effort, was occupied in 1997.
Our current pastoral team consists of Dr. Ben Orchard and Chris Martin as paid staff along with Jerry Laursen, Ed Mattfeld, and Doug Snook as lay elders. Ben started at VBC in August 2005 and Chris joined us in the summer of 2010.
As we finish taking this look back and consider the future, we are amazed at God’s faithfulness and grace as He continues to use frail humans for His purpose. At VBC, we long to honor and obey Him, continuing to serve Him as we proclaim biblical truth, cultivating relationships that are intimate with Christ, active in the church, and loving the community.